Optimizing SaaS Blog for SEO: Expert Insights [2024]

Over the last few years, we’ve focused on helping SaaS businesses get organic search traffic through their blogs.

As I like to say, the goal is not only to get traffic, the goal is to get actual high-quality leads and that’s what we do for our clients at Quoleady.

We helped our client go from 0 to 50K visits and 0 to 650 leads with only 20 articles, as you can read in this case study. That’s the kind of results we’re after.

For years, we experimented with different SaaS SEO strategies until we found the one that really boosts your SEO efforts – high-intent content marketing strategy.

In this article, I want to share the best SaaS SEO practices that will help you rank high on search engines.

This guide can help you whether you want to do a SaaS SEO audit of your web page or you’re just getting into creating your SaaS SEO strategy.

You’ll find a detailed SaaS SEO checklist below, but let’s get first things first.

What is SaaS blog SEO?

SEO for SaaS is a set of strategies for increasing organic traffic to your SaaS blog or website. Just like regular SEO, it consists of off-page and on-page optimization.

The goal of SaaS SEO is to generate more organic traffic to your blog, by pushing your article to the top of search engine results for a target keyword.

Then, when the readers come to your blog, you can use product-led content to introduce  them to your SaaS and convert them into leads.

A typical SaaS SEO strategy starts with identifying your objectives and your target audience followed by extensive keyword research.

A good SaaS SEO strategy is one that strives to find the balance between:

1. positioning your blog as one of the first organic search results on Google
2. delivering the relevant content to your target audience, at the right moment
3. converting site visitors into buyers

Sometimes it can be challenging to do both technical SEO and at the same time create content that people will love to read, let alone turn visitors into clients.

As a SaaS SEO agency, we found that the most successful SaaS SEO strategy that ticks all the boxes is focusing on high-intent keywords.

They are also BOFU keywords because they’re a clear sign that a person is at the bottom of the sales funnel and most likely ready to buy.

These keywords show a high purchasing search intent, they’re ideal for customer acquisition and you can recognize them by queries related to price, purchasing, etc.

Other high-intent keyword opportunities include search queries where people search for alternatives to a particular SaaS and comparisons of two or more SaaS products. If you cover these keywords, you can attract people ready to buy.

That’s exactly what we did for our client FullSession, a web analytics software, using their main competitor – HotJar. We positioned FullSession as the #1 result on Google when someone searches for “HotJar alternatives” or compares HotJar with some other well-known apps.

This SEO campaign helped FullSession get more than 21.000 visits and 500 leads in only four months. If you want to find out the exact things we did read this case study.

Why do you need to optimize your SaaS blog for SEO?

While your content marketing strategy could include various channels, at Quoleady we believe that your SaaS website and blog should be the core of your strategy. As such, search engine optimization is a must. Here’s why:

• It boosts visibility. The main goal of search engine optimization is to boost your visibility on Google and get you more traffic. Yes, some SaaS companies turn to paid traffic as a quicker solution, but organic results are more trustworthy than paid ads and they have a better ROI in the long run.
• It helps you build brand name and trust. SEO content creation can help you establish your SaaS company as an industry expert and a trustworthy source of information. Just imagine if every time someone googled something related to your industry, one of your articles appeared as one of the first results and solved their problem. With time, you could become a leader and authority in your industry, which would get you more clients.
• Evergreen content. Once you create content for your blog, it can bring you new leads for months and even years. Of course, you have to update it with relevant information, but that’s still easier than producing new content all the time.

Check out the best SaaS content marketing blogs to get inspired.

If you need help with SaaS SEO strategy and content creation, we’re here for you. Book a free call and let’s see what we can do together!

The Checklist for SaaS SEO 

As someone who’s been doing SaaS SEO for years, I know how difficult it can be to get all ranking factors right. That’s why I’ve created a checklist that can help you both when you’re creating an SEO strategy from scratch or working on a SaaS content audit and optimizing your existing content.

1. Technical SEO for SaaS blog

I’d start by accessing Google Search Console as well as Page Speed Insights checking whether any technical issues are affecting your SaaS SEO success. Here’s what you have to do:

• Check the page loading speed
  According to Google recommendations, you should try to keep the page loading speed under two seconds. The slower it gets, the more you risk losing potential customers, because people are getting impatient and their attention span is getting shorter every year. According to one study, if the page loading speed goes up to 5 seconds, it could increase the probability of bounce by 90%.
• Make it mobile responsive
  Mobile responsive SaaS websites load faster and they offer a much better user experience. You should also make your content mobile-friendly and skimmable by using short paragraphs broken down by headlines and adding enough white space in between.
• Optimize your alt image tags
  If you aim to get to Google image search, it’s important to optimize your images by adding alt image tags. when you add those tags make sure to keep it relevant to the image as well as to the main keyword in the article. Stay away from generalized broad descriptions and try to keep them under 125 characters.
• Fix URLs
  Make sure that you have clear and simple URLs. The simpler the URL architecture is, the easier it gets to navigate your website. The best practice for URL slugs is to include your main keyword in the URL. However, stay away from changing URLs of the articles that perform well already as well as those that have a number of external backlinks pointing to them. Don’t forget to 301 redirect your old URLs to the new ones if you decide to go for a change.
• Fix broken links and redirects
  Make sure you don’t have any of the following: incorrect 301 or 302 redirects, broken external links, links that lead to 404 error pages, or any orphaned pages that don’t have any link leading to them at all.
• Update your robot.txt file, site map add schema markup
  By updating these elements you’re helping search engine bots to better understand your website and its content. As a result, your website pages may rank higher as well as get a chance to be displayed as the google featured snippet.
  Exploring a thorough evaluation of your website’s SEO effectiveness? An option worth exploring is an SEO Analyzer tool that can offer detailed insights into different facets of your SEO strategy, aiding in a comprehensive approach to optimizing your site’s performance.

2. Keyword research for SaaS blog

The choice of keywords is crucial when it comes to optimizing your SaaS blog for SEO. It’s essential to do thorough keyword research that’s aligned with your business goals.

• Make use of high-intent keywords
  SaaS marketing agencies know that the quickest way to get high-quality leads is to optimize your blog for high-intent keywords. Examples of high-intent keywords are when someone is comparing similar apps, looking for an alternative to your competitor’s app or looking for the best SaaS solutions. If you have an app for scheduling meetings, some of the high-intent keywords could be: “best scheduling apps”, “scheduling apps comparison”, “Calendly alternatives” and so on.
• Stick to your goals
  Don’t get tempted to target keywords just because they have a high search volume, but may not fit into your overall SaaS strategy. Before you start with keyword research, you should define your goals and your overall SaaS content marketing strategy. If your goal is customer acquisition, I believe that search intent matters more than search volume. On the other hand, your goal may be brand awareness which means you’d be targeting people in all phases of the buyers’ journey with relevant pages.
• Make use of content clusters
  Cluster content is a set of blog posts that are organized around one umbrella topic. There’s usually one bigger article that acts as a pillar page and cluster content that links to it and vice versa. The pillar page is actually a comprehensive guide on the topic and other articles cover subtopics in more detail. Clustered content can help you rank for more difficult keywords and build topical authority over time. If you’re not sure where to start, you can use Ahrefs or SemRush keyword research tools. Just enter a keyword and generate relevant content ideas. Then create a series of articles covering all related topics. It’s important to link them all to the pillar page. This way not only you’ll give your pillar page a significant ranking boost but also get a number of pages ranking for less competitive but very relevant keywords.
• Make use of long-tail keywords
  You should leverage long-tail keywords because they’re usually less competitive keywords showing that a person is further down in the sales funnel, which means there’s a higher chance of a conversion. Again, do not over-focus on search volume and don’t let keyword research tools trick you. Yes, short-tail keywords may have a higher search volume, but there’s way less chance for conversion because they’re usually too broad and generic. Long-tail keywords can often bring more SEO traffic than Ahrefs is promising, especially if you’re just starting out with your blog.

3. Blog content SEO optimization

Now that you’ve got your target keywords and maybe even an article draft, it’s time to optimize your articles to make sure they get the well-deserved organic traffic.

• Include keywords, but no keyword stuffing
  You should add keywords throughout the text, but make them seem natural and blended. Don’t go overboard with repeating the same keywords with your SaaS content writing as it may look like keyword stuffing and alienate your readers. Don’t forget to add your main keywords to the URL slug, title and headings.
• Make sure the length is what everyone else is writing
  Always try to keep the length of your blog post similar to other posts that are trending for that topic. You can do this with free tools like checking the first results for your keyword on Google, or you can use tools like Surfer/Outranking.io to check the recommended length. It can be tempting to go the extra mile and write a much more detailed article than other SaaS companies in an attempt to rank higher, but there’s always a good reason why a certain length is suggested. A great thing about Surfer is that it also gives you recommended keywords, which is a nice bonus. I also suggest reading this article for more SaaS content writing tips.
• Add internal links
  Internal linking can help you boost your blog post in a free, organic way. You can do this both if you want to boost a new article you’ve just published, or if you want to boost an old post that stopped performing that well. To find out more, read our guide on internal linking.

4. Off-site SEO optimization for SaaS blog

On-page SEO is not enough and a big part of an overall SaaS SEO strategy is connecting your SaaS website with other web pages, in other words, link-building.

The best link-building strategies focus on quality over quantity. Not to say that the number of links isn’t important, but when you’re building external links make sure that you choose relevant platforms for link-building.

Here’s what you should pay attention to:

• Check domain authority: You could choose a well-known platform, or use tools like Moz, Ahrefs or SEMRush to check domain authority. A link from a website with a higher DA has a bigger SEO value than a number of low-quality links.
• Make sure the platform has consistent traffic: There’s no point in choosing a  website (even if it looks good) if it doesn’t have a lot of visitors. Make sure that the website you choose is actively visited because it’s the only way it can send traffic to your blog.
• Make sure the niche is relevant to your SaaS product: Finally, Google finds it strange when two unrelated websites link to each other. Choose a website from your niche or industry and make sure that the context is relevant to your article.

Leverage your SaaS SEO strategy

I hope that this article helped you answer your questions and that you will use these SaaS SEO tips on your blog.

To sum it up, I’d start with keyword research, focusing on high-intent keywords. I’d then optimize content and other technical aspects of your blog. Finally, I’d focus on getting high-quality backlinks to help your SaaS business rank on Google or other search engines.

I know that it may seem like a lot, especially for small SaaS businesses that may not have a whole SEO team at their disposal. That’s why we’re here to help!

If you need a hand with SaaS SEO strategy and content creation, you’re in the right place. We can help you get new leads through your website like we helped many SaaS companies. Book a free call and let’s talk!

As always, Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn if you have any questions.